Yesterday, we noted North Korea’s weekend saber rattling and Mike Pence’s warning shot in return. And last week, we explained why Donald Trump’s apparent flip-flop on labeling China a currency manipulator was a strategic calculation to ensure China’s cooperation on North Korea. Indeed, over the weekend, Trump tweeted, “Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korean problem? We will see what happens!”

But what if China is pulling some strings of its own? As political strategist Dick Morris wonders, “Is China using the threat of North Korea to derail Trump’s trade agenda?” He says, “You can never tell with North Korea how much of the threat is legitimate and how much of it is ginned up by the Chinese for their own purposes.”

The theory, of course, is that China has undervalued the yuan and overvalued the dollar, creating hundreds of billions of dollars of trade surplus with the U.S. Losing that surplus would be a huge blow to the Chinese economy, leaving them plenty of motivation for what Morris speculates — they’re using the North Koreans to get Trump off their backs.

Rest assured, Trump and his advisers are all over this, but the American media is not. The Trump administration was surely considering these countermeasures as soon as he mentioned China after the election. And the chess match bears watching.